One Fact: everybody, literally everybody around the world, loves Takeshi's Castle. If you are a young Japanese, you may not have seen this. If so, please take a look at this (and laugh!):

I am confident that you laughed at this pointless and cruel entertainment. Kitano Takeshi (super-well known as Beat Takeshi in Japan) is an absolute genius of creating millions of stupid and elaborate traps, of which countless ordinary people became humiliated victims. You cannot help laughing out loud (腹筋崩壊) at them. People do their best (and harm or humiliate themselves over and over again) to get ¥ 1,000,000 ($10,000) award, but we all know the winner will be Takeshi. That's how it in Takeshi's Castle. He is so unequally powerful and imaginative. There is just no way people can defeat him.

 "Life is a game. So fight for survival and see if you're worth it."

But why do we love (or at least laugh at) Takeshi's Castle?? It may be neither meaningful nor easy to break down this enigma (I will do systems analysis in the future if I feel like it). But let me try to list up crucial points.

Pointless - Yes. There is entirely no point. My friend from Italy once asked me "Why people do this stupid thing?". Of course, I don't know at all and asking such a logical question makes me laugh more.
Merciless - Not all of the pointless things can make us laugh. Even though it may not need any point to be entertainment, you still need some direction. Takeshi's traps are so creative, compelling, thoughtful and merciless toward the innocent people. Without any question, it smashes their hope and dirties them up.
This is Life - When watching Takeshi's Castle, we are laughing at the pointless trials of people deemed to be defeated by merciless traps. We make fun of their self-hurting and repetitive defeat. But we can never underestimate Takeshi's true cruelness. The pointless and cruel may imply our life itself. And we are laughing at ourselves of trying hopeless challenges over and over again.
Anyhow, we don't have to stop our pointless and hopeless challenge just because someone is laughing at us. Let's embrace it and let people laugh at us. In the end, we can at least entertain people.